A Tragedy of Lost History
People at the station know that I love looking through our video library. Most people don't get it, but there's just something about looking at stories from 1980 that put things into perspective for me.
You can look at stories from 25 years ago, and see that people had the same worries and the same complaints that they do today. I did a story a month or so a go where I incorporated video from 1982. In that story, people were complaining about gas prices. That sounds familiar right? They were paying a $1.15 a gallon, which adjusted for inflation, is actually more than we're paying now. So you look at stories from the past and realize that while we sometimes think things have never been as bad, they really have.
This is what brings me to the Title of my post today. We have in our video library basically every story we've ever aired for the past 25 years. That's great, but the station's been on the air for 42 years.
From 1963 until 1979 stories were shot on film. Sometime in the 1980's we donated the film library to the University of North Alabama in Florence. It made sense. Just think of all the things that happened in North Alabama during the 60's and 70's. Think of all the stories we did about Warner Von Braun. We did stories about Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins in Huntsville, getting ready for man's first landing on the moon. Our film library really told the story of the Watercress Capital of the World, becoming the Rocket City. So this was donated to UNA for their use and to give the library the safe keeping our building no longer had the room to provide.
I'm not sure if we needed something from the library for a story we were working on or if we just called to check. But when we asked about the film library we had donated, someone on the other end at UNA said, "Oh, we threw all of that out."
As you read this, somewhere, most likely in Northwest Alabama, maybe underneath a copy of TV guide with Tom Selleck on the cover, or a dirty diaper, sits two decades of history, rotting in a landfill.
You can look at stories from 25 years ago, and see that people had the same worries and the same complaints that they do today. I did a story a month or so a go where I incorporated video from 1982. In that story, people were complaining about gas prices. That sounds familiar right? They were paying a $1.15 a gallon, which adjusted for inflation, is actually more than we're paying now. So you look at stories from the past and realize that while we sometimes think things have never been as bad, they really have.
This is what brings me to the Title of my post today. We have in our video library basically every story we've ever aired for the past 25 years. That's great, but the station's been on the air for 42 years.
From 1963 until 1979 stories were shot on film. Sometime in the 1980's we donated the film library to the University of North Alabama in Florence. It made sense. Just think of all the things that happened in North Alabama during the 60's and 70's. Think of all the stories we did about Warner Von Braun. We did stories about Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins in Huntsville, getting ready for man's first landing on the moon. Our film library really told the story of the Watercress Capital of the World, becoming the Rocket City. So this was donated to UNA for their use and to give the library the safe keeping our building no longer had the room to provide.
I'm not sure if we needed something from the library for a story we were working on or if we just called to check. But when we asked about the film library we had donated, someone on the other end at UNA said, "Oh, we threw all of that out."
As you read this, somewhere, most likely in Northwest Alabama, maybe underneath a copy of TV guide with Tom Selleck on the cover, or a dirty diaper, sits two decades of history, rotting in a landfill.
posted by Carson Clark @ 10:36 PM
1 Comments:
At 1:49 PM,
jamey tucker said…
something similar happened to archive film footage in Memphis. I'm told a news director or manager 10-20 years ago decided to throw out all of the film reels at the CBS affiliate.
Not too long ago while I was fairly new to this area and working for the station, I wanted to use some footage of Elvis or Jerry Lee Lewis. I was told it was gone. Thrown away. Carted off and dumped in the trash.
all of that cool footage of Elvis, Lewis, Sam Phillips, MLK Jr, everything...gone.
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